Just a preview of something soon to appear in Sanfran...The Stanford Radio Telescope dish!http://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126792.jpghttp://forums.avsim.net/user_files/126793.jpgStay tuned for Chris Low's Sanfran 2005 set.:-wave

Excellent model! That must have taken a bit more than a coffee break! It looks very accurate.

Well dun jon, your the past mster of scafolding, and youv serpasedyour felf agen.I think its incredabl, and I like the way it blends in at the bace.glidernut.

Rob/John,Thankee ;)Coffee break NOT! It definitely wasn't one of those 'Eureka/Voila!/jump out of bed at 1AM and start the PC' moments. I originally put it together quite fast but my first flyby was a disaster. A few (tens of) tries later, it was quite 'stable'. It's as complex as it looks, all 572 polygons of it!There's a brace of dishes north of Hastings, halfway to Seddlescombe - do we need a set there? They'd be simpler, I'd imagine :-rollThe 'scaffolding' trick is to only mip things that can be rendered - avoiding mashy transparency. For example, make EVERYTHING a bit 'thicker' than real life, to get at least 1 pixel's worth of un-aliased detail. Like Rob's chainlink fence, my wire fences, bridges etc. Beyond that, use simple structures, double-siding and put the detail in the mip if possible. The base 'blend' is done by setting the anchor point to the lowest point on the ground and using a dithered sample from a screenshot of the same ground as the fill colour of the edging (phew!). ACTUALLY, I am not happy at all with this as the elevation is all over the place right here. It's supposed to be a road around the base and I'm (not so secretly now...) trying to come up with a 100% better one before release. I just hope Chris doesn't put a tree in the middle of it before I send it to him.Talking about hmmmmm, it's 7PM and I might just fire up Anim8or and see if I can send it tonight...Oh! The pressure... :-wave

Jon,There are no trees interfering with either the dish or the two buildings at the moment, so don't mess around with it ;-)Chris Low.

Beautiful, but is it really there ?B.Adamski

Bogdan,Jon has built the model by studying photographs of the real thing !Chris Low.

Chris, Don't worry, I didn't stuff around with it! The problem is, ANY improvement requires a vast amount of work :-( ...and I wanted to fly for a change ;)Bogdan,As far as I know, it is. At least it is still current on their website:http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/neighbor...iting/dish.htmland these folk visited it in March, 2004:http://alumni.hmc.edu/dish2004.htm:-wave

Jon, don't worry about sending stuf to me, its not important anymor.glidernut.

Ok. I'm glad. Chris, you can set this antena as moving ground object. Long time ago I made moving and rotating cranes. So, you can set this model with a path like half small circle with the option 'oscilate', the model will be rotating. It will be more interesting IMO.B.Adamski

Bogdan,An interesting idea, but a radio telescope would only move for two reasons.....1. When the operators intended to point it at a particular object/location in the sky.2. To keep track of a targeted object.The first option would mean that the telescope would move ONCE, and then stop (as opposed to backwards and forwards incessantly). The second option would involve an INCREDIBLY SLOW rotation, since it would have to negate the rotation of the Earth to stay fixed to the object being tracked. It is also worth noting that keeping track of a targeted object would result in the telescope moving in one direction ONLY.Either way, a radio telescope dish that constantly moved back and forth wouldn't really make a lot of sense, although it would certainly make the FU3 world "come alive". What does everyone else think ?Chris Low.PS. I might look into this to see how it works.

Chris,I did it with mine, I just disn't send you THAT package ;)I actually set mine to rotate from east to west (i.e. 180 degrees) but REAL slow. I'll check what rate I used but it had a lot of zeros in it!This is why I set the dish's origin dead-center.The idea of having it move so slow (~180 degrees in 8-12 hours) is simply that having it move faster would look stupid. You don't normally drive something this large in a continuous manner - not only is it hard to gear it down enough whilst still allowing quick placement, but the constant vibration and bouncing would send the focus all over the heavens and not in a nice, smooth arc as desired. As triangulated and reinforced as a large dish may look, the necessity to keep them light enough to move (yet wind-resistant) means that they tend to wobble and shake a bit during movement.So, I set mine to rotate such that if you are flying around the area for an hour or 2, you won't SEE it move but you'll notice that it HAS moved. If it moved like Bogdan's cranes (nice touch - I've enjoyed dodging them for years...), you'd probably also start popping welds and wear out the track and motors real fast.BTW, radio astronomy is best done at night, when the atmospheric and solar noise is lowest. This means that during daylight hours, if you see one move, it is probably a maintenance test, or pre-alignment for that night's viewing. If someone would do a challenge for this, we could have it move into position at 10PM and follow track until 4AM, then return and wait. Or maybe just be in a different position each time you start the game. Too much trouble? Yes, I think so...:-wave

Jon,The extremely slow movement might be a nice touch, though. Would it be possible to combine this with a faster swing back to the original position ? I was thinking maybe starting with that long movement as it keeps track of the targeted object, followed by maybe an hour in a static position (storing data, maintenance check etc), and then a somewhat quicker (but still relatively slow) movement in the other direction until it reaches the starting position...Or is that too complex for the FU3 animation routines to handle ? ;-)Chris Low.

O yes, I love Bogdan's cranes. I love Jon`s yelow UK cranes too, but the wateing time bitween moovmantsof the yelow UK cranes is too long in my opinion, I now the time bitween moovmants is troow to life, but I carnt wate around that long, so I neverget to see em moov.When trying to study how it was dun, I remember having to keep on wateing for ages. By the way, how do I contact to get the electric terned off bifor atemptingto get this man douwn? Jon or Chirs? glidernut.

John,The power can't be turned off. The poor guy is toast :-lolChris Low.